PolairDrill™
Health & Safety
PolairDrill™ is formulated with 2 main goals:
• Provide extra protection against heat buildup in drills
• Better tool wear / service life for equipment
• Reduce oil fog and oil smoke to protect miners
As drilling can take place in environments ranging from extreme cold to hot, there are challenges to creating a rock drill oil that can handle both extremes. No one base oil can adequately and safely address both of these conditions. To achieve wide temperature tolerance properties, PolairDrill™ formulations use different esters which are suited to each ambient environment.
We avoid additives that provide a very low pour point, such as polyalphaolefins (PAOs), as these materials can liberate respiratory irritants when subjected to heat from hard drilling conditions. Instead we focus on safe and effective synthetic esters engineered to provide excellent tool life at low temperatures.
Oil fog and smoke are serious issues that mines address by ventilation supply. PolairDrill™ assists air quality efforts through polar adhesion to tool surfaces, and agglomeration of oil molecules to produce large oil particles that settle rapidly, and reduce the risk of inhalation deep into the lungs.
The high temperature tolerance of our polar esters provides lubricity at much higher temperatures than regular rock drill oils, and reduces the effects of friction/heat buildup due to lubricant breakdown. The photo shows the difference in heat tolerance between a thin film of PolairDrill™ at 517o F (oval shape) and regular rock drill oil at 425o F (triangle shape). Besides the formation of abrasive carbon and varnish deposits, the regular rock drill oil smoked excessively compared to the ester of PolairDrill™ Oil smoke is more hazardous for respiration than oil fog, and PolairDrill™ can tolerate heat at much higher temperatures than regular rock drill oils, reducing hazardous oil smoke generation.
Other Health and Safety benefits of PolairDrill™ include:
• Low odour – pleasant to use
• Reduced oil fog deposits on skin and safety glasses
• Better visibility for drilling accuracy and avoidance of trip hazards
• Reduced struggling with drills that are sluggish or losing compression
• Reduced mechanical intervention necessitated by equipment failures
Inhalation hazards increase as particle size decreases. 
PolairDrill™ is formulated with esters that resist deformation from turbulent compressed air, and tend to coalesce into larger droplets as temperatures decrease within the drill towards the exhaust port.
Additionally, tackifiers are incorporated into the rock drill formulations to increase adhesion to tool surfaces, further minimizing the atomizing effect of compressed air.